On October 11th, 1987, 200,000 people marched on Washington in a movement to demand gay rights and demand funding for AIDs research. Because of their work and the work of activists like them, I, along with millions of other Americans, am able to live openly as a member of the LGBTQ community. Thirty years after the March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, October 11th is recognized as National Coming Out Day, and as someone with considerable experience in the field, I’d like to share my thoughts.
One November evening in 2014, I was sitting in the living room with my parents, telling them that I’m bisexual. I can perfectly recall the feeling of fear, and the worries about what this would mean for my relationship with my family. I had no idea what to expect, but I ended up being very lucky: while it didn’t go perfectly, it left me feeling relieved and comforted by the fact that they would accept me no matter what. I remember thinking that the hard part was over. After months of reading heartfelt stories and watching coming out videos on YouTube, I was convinced that coming out to my family was a defining point in my life.
One thing to know about coming out is that it’s a process. Some people choose to come out to their friends before they come out to their family, or vice versa. Some people want to let the whole world know at once, and some people wait decades to tell anyone, whether it be out of necessity or pure desire. There’s no right or wrong way to come out.
You don’t have to come out to everybody. You don’t have to shout your queerness from the rooftops. You don’t have to parade through the streets with a pride flag. You don’t have to come out at all. For many, coming out is a deeply personal experience.
With all this in mind, it’s important to remember the limitations of celebrating Coming Out Day. Coming out opens doors to new communities and ideas, but it in no way defines one’s experience of life as a member of the LGBTQ community. There are countless queer people who can’t come out for fear of losing their jobs, families, and safety. There are countless people who choose not to come out. In a world where there are countless reasons not to come out, visibility doesn’t determine one’s place as a queer person. Coming out is not something everyone does, so we can’t frame it as a defining moment in every single queer person’s journey.
Almost three years after I came out to my family, I can say comfortably that it’s not the most important of my life so far, and I’m much more excited by the prospect of a world where there isn’t a closet to come out of. So this week, come out if you want to, celebrate your sexuality if you want to, or do neither of those things if you want to. Destroy the idea that you have to come out in order to be yourself. Destroy the idea that labels and visibility determine who you are. We’ve come a long way in the past 30 years, but we still have so much farther to go.